“Dry your eyes. Kiss Nash and tell him everything is going to be all right. You have both started over before,more than once, so take the insurance money, buy a new bar, take a trip before you settle in to working, and never look back. Think about the happiness you have with Nash, and move on,” Bernie told her.
Then, as luck would have it, a small bar not three miles from Hoot’s new farm came up for sale. Pepper’s Place, named for the man who built it twenty years before and made a drink with jalapeño peppers floating on the top, was located just over the border from a dry county in Texas, and that made the decision for the whole family. Hoot sold his ranch in Ratliff City, and on Bernie’s okay, the kids donated the land where the Chicken Coop had been all those years to the city for a brand-new volunteer fire department building. Hoot chipped in a chunk of money to buy them a new shiny red truck.
“The Universe spoke and Fate agreed. Yes, I wept a little at the idea of the bar being gone, but the Good Book says, ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust.’ I just mourned and grieved like I would at any good friend’s funeral, but when I thought about it, everything seemed fitting,” Bernie told Pepper, who growled at the cat who thought she owned the Paradise porch. “They each owned half of the Chicken Coop. Now they own Pepper’s Place together. It’s like two halves now make a whole, and even though I didn’t get to be in the wedding, I’m glad that they got married in Vegas just before they took over the new bar. The name of the place seemed like an omen tome and Clara both, especially when they found that it had an antique jukebox in it with a whole collection of records so they can change them out.”
Pepper growled at the cat again, and she flopped down under another rocking chair.
“You’ll get her trained, but it will take a while,” Bernie assured him and lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “Maybe you’ll get that job done by the time I get Ursula and Remy together. It took some doing for me to get him over here today, but I finagled it just right. If I can get a bawling great-niece of mine and a sexy, silver-haired feller together, then this should be a piece of cake. And besides, Pepper, my boy, Remy lives right next door. That’s as good as it gets. Mary Jane will have another of her girls close by, and maybe even have her first grandbaby by the time another Thanksgiving rolls around.
“I hear a vehicle coming down the lane. I’m so excited that I could dance a jig right here on the porch.” She shaded her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yep, I believe it’s Ursula, and here come Joe Clay and Remy around the end of the house. The Universe is with us today and life is good, Pepper. Even though I grieved when the Chicken Coop burned, I’ve moved on. Now it’s time to work my magic on Ursula and Remy.”
The Matchmakers
Chapter 1
“This one is going to be successful,” Minnie said as she and her two friends, Sookie and Dotty, got in line to go through customs so they could board the cruise ship. “I can feel it in my bones.”
Minnie was just under six feet tall and had gray hair that she kept cut short and blue eyes set in a bed of wrinkles in her slim face. Built on the slender side, she hated anything that made her sweat and loved good food. Her motto was that she would eat what she wanted and die when the good Lord saw fit to take her, and bless her heart, she never gained a pound.
“You said that last time, and it was our first failure in six months, but then it could be your arthritis talking to you, not your intuition,” Sookie told her as the three of them moved forward a few feet. Today’s group moved along at a pretty good clip, but it still seemed to take forever to get to the customs desk. Boarding and then deboarding was the only bad thing they’d found about living on one cruise ship after another since they had sold their homes and refused to go to an assisted-living center.
“Oh, hush that kind of talk.” Minnie shook a finger at her friend. “You’ll jinx our next mission, and we depend on you to make the plan once I spot a target.”
“I already see my target,” Dotty whispered and nodded toward a tall, dark-haired man in the line next to them. “He looks absolutely miserable, doesn’t he?”
Dotty’s green eyes sparkled with orneriness. Her honey-blond hair did not have a single gray in it because she was as careful to keep them plucked out as she was to keep her light-brown eyebrows. She claimed that good genes and DNA kept her round face from being wrinkled, but if the truth were told, it was the fact that she loved food as much as Minnie did and carried around twenty extra pounds. Her theory was that if she ever got sick, she could depend on the extra weight to keep her from dying.
“So does that cowboy over there…” Minnie started and then shook her head when a tall blond joined him and planted a kiss on his lips.
“I’d say that he’s taken,” Dotty said with a giggle. “I’ll bet you ten bucks they’re on their honeymoon.”
“I see a sparkling new ring on her left hand and a wide gold band on his.” Minnie sighed. “I guess it’ll have to be Mr. Tall, Dark, and Lonesome. I don’t see a wedding ring on his hand, so you’re off to a good start, Dotty. Maybe we’ll have good success on this trip.”
“I see a white ring around his left ring finger. He could possibly be ready for a rebound,” Dotty whispered as they moved forward in the line.
Sookie eyed him closely. “I’m not sure about him, my friend. We like to see more than rebounds. We want the cake, the dress, and the whole thing when we put a couple together. It’s like half the job is done if it’s nothing but a booty call.”
“And you’d know a lot about those booty calls,” Minnie teased.
“Of course, I would. Being middle-aged doesn’t mean I’ve already got one foot in the casket.” Sookie tucked a strand of brown hair—compliments of the hair stylist on whatever ship they had been on when she needed her roots touched up—back behind an ear. Cut chin length, her hair matched her milk-chocolate-colored eyes. She had jogged since she was a teenager and had a firm body to prove it, and nowadays, she always spent an hour every morning in the ship’s fitness room and then jogged up and down the staircases several times.
“Middle-aged?” Dotty snorted. “Seventy-five is a little past that.”
“Not if I plan to live to be a hundred and fifty,” Sookie eyed Mr. Tall, Dark, and Lonesome out of the corner of her eye.
“Well, we’ve got eight days. If we can’t make a match in that time, we should give up our snowbirds-in-residence status and check into an assisted-living place,” Minnie said. “Looks like we’re next in line. Are we ready for another cruise?”
“Hell, yeah!” Sookie and Dotty high-fived each other.
“Are we ready for another challenge?” Sookie asked.
“Damn straight!” Dotty and Minnie gave her the thumbs-up sign.
“Who’s ready for a drink at the launch party?” Dotty asked.
All three hands went up.
“Next.” The lady at the front of the line motioned for Sookie to go to the left.
